Review: Conservation challenges in China

4 November 2010

Cultural and political awareness are key
to the battle to preserve China’s historic towns, according to Professor Ruan
Yisan, Director of the Chinese National Research Centre of Historic Cities, who spoke
at UCL on 21 October.

Ruan Yisan – who is also Chairman of the
Yangtze Heritage Foundation and Professor at the College of Architecture and
Urban Planning at Tongji University – set out the challenges facing Chinese
conservation efforts in a guest lecture
reviewed here by Kelvin Ang and Dorina Dobnig, students at the UCL Centre for
Sustainable Heritage.

“This guest lecture, co-hosted by the
Centre for Sustainable Heritage and the International Centre for Chinese
Heritage and Archeology, gave an insight into some of the specific problematics
facing conservation efforts in China and the need for balanced sustainable
urban development.

The lecture itself was given in Mandarin
and relayed to the audience in consecutive translation. Interestingly, the
English title of the talk was amended in translation, where instead of
‘water-villages’ as per original (and the term used in Chinese), the term
‘Venetian towns’ was used, perhaps to make the concept more readily accessible
to a non-Chinese audience. This struck a chord with the reviewers (both
non-British), who had to acknowledge the primacy of Venice as the model of how
we understand what a ‘water-based’ urban environment is like!

With his animated expression and use of
passionate speech, Professor Ruan certainly did not come across as a member of
the intelligentsia isolated in an
ivory tower – a perception which he explained was a constraint in early 1980s
China, when he was spearheading his ideas in the field.

Professor Ruan Yisan’s background is in
urban planning – he is a professor at the College of Architecture and Urban
Planning at Tongji University, Director of the National Research Centre of
Historic Cities and chairman of the Yangtze Heritage Foundation. He is also the
initiator of a number of well-known and award-winning conservation projects in
China, including the restoration of the Bund in Shanghai and the Nanjing Road.

Giving an exemplaric overview of his work
on six historic water towns in the area south of the Yangtze river, which was
awarded the UNESCO Asian Pacific Heritage Award of Distinction in 2003,
Professor Ruan gave outlines for a possible approach to the conservation of
historic cities in China.

The six water towns that were subject to
the lecture, namely Zhouzhuang, Tongli, Luzhi, Nanxun, Wuzhen and Xitang, are
located in the Jiangnan region of China, a region of great economic and
cultural wealth.

Each town has not only its own local
character, but also distinct architecture and heritage qualities, such as local
handicraft skills, medicine and cultural expressions, which were in danger of
being lost along with the historic fabric as rapid development spread outwards
from Shanghai following the development policy promoted by the Government since
1980.

Between 1960 and 1980, at the time when
Professor Ruan started out with his research, there had been over 100 such
water towns, but as a consequence of rapid development, their number has been
greatly reduced. The state-led development of rural areas to semi-industrial
ones brought with it destructive growth and an encroachment of industrial sites
on the historic structures. The economic benefit to the region came at the cost
of cultural and environmental loss.

Professor Ruan presented the practical
strategies for ensuring cooperation with local government and residents he had
to develop after first being turned down by local officials when arguing for
the conservation of the historic cities.

Cultural awareness may well be the key to
achieving success in the conservation of heritage towns in China, as an
understanding of local political systems and community values would give clues
to the professional on how to fight this battle to save whatever is considered
to be ‘heritage’ at hand.

Professor Ruan shared that in the light of
the centralised power structure in China, he took the approach of not just
obtaining agreement on the conservation plan for each water-town from the local
city government, but he made sure that it was also endorsed at every level of
authority – District, County and finally the Provincial Government.

With that backing, he was able to ensure
that the village authority was able to carry out the conservation plans and the
development of the new town next to the old town – and that this would prevent
developers from contravening a directive published by the Provincial
Government. Such insights will be helpful to any of us who may consider
projects in China in the future.

In a concluding critique, contrasting the
qualities of historic towns with modern cities in China, Professor Ruan called
for the identification, development and inclusion of Chinese characteristics in
contemporary urban planning and – unusually for us – the importance of creating
‘beauty’ as an outcome of development.

In fact, Professor Ruan was forthright in
his aesthetic criticism that the new developments in most of China’s cities are
not beautiful, but in fact ugly. He was also frank in stating that his work in
conserving the traditional towns is not just to preserve traditional culture,
but to raise the awareness of the validity of traditional ways of architecture
and city making, which are in tune with a traditional Chinese psyche. These
towns should serve to inspire architects and planners in China to a new way of
building and planning that would then create unique, harmonious and beautiful
cities.

Professor Ruan presented to a full
auditorium with a mixed audience of students and professionals and a notably
strong presence of young students from China, giving the opportunity to address
an audience of ambitious students in their formative years, who are potential
supporters of the heritage cause once they return to China to pursue their
field.”

UCL context

The UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage consists of a small, flexible, focused, interdisciplinary team – a model of sustainable practice. Its contribution to a sustainable future for the
heritage is through participation in collaborative environmental,
scientific and technological research, innovative teaching, advice and
consultancy.

The Centre engages in evidence-based research on heritage
protection, and through its teaching activities challenges the
traditional divide between preservation and use. Its staff work closely with external partners on interdisciplinary
stakeholder-led research focusing on past, present and future climate
and on educating future heritage managers on the links between
sustainability and cultural heritage.